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New Orleans Has Power to Boost Affordable Housing, for Now

A plaque in New Orleans' Bywater neighborhood commemorates the Plessy v. Ferguson case, the first post-Reconstruction legal challenge to segregation. (Photo by Oscar Perry Abello)

On Tuesday in Baton Rouge, a Republican-majority Louisiana state legislature did the wholly unexpected: A committee shut down a measure that would prevent municipalities from creating and using inclusionary zoning as a tool to boost affordable housing production.

As reported by The New Orleans Advocate, had the bill by Republican State Senator Conrad Appel become law, it would have made moot a plan by New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu to require set-aside units for low-income residents in developments above certain size thresholds within targeted areas of the city. The bill would have also halted any exploration of the concept in other cities around the state.

Appel is the same state senator that also tried and failed to block New Orleans’ local hiring ordinance, which requires builders to give the city a five-day head start on job postings to try and fill them with qualified residents from disadvantaged neighborhoods whom the city has identified and trained through local workforce development partnerships.

Inclusionary zoning is one tool that municipalities and local housing authorities can use to help meet AFFH requirements by moving poor residents into wealthier areas of the city. Under Landrieu’s proposal, the targeted areas where set-asides for low-income housing would be required are already considered “strong” or “moderate” markets. They’re areas where housing costs are going up or are already among the highest in the city, including the French Quarter and the nearby neighborhoods of Marigny and Bywater.

It’s intentionally designed to be a total contrast to the history of zoning being used to keep low-income residents and residents of color away from white, typically wealthier communities. Even today, whiter and wealthier communities resort to NIMBY resistance to keep affordable housing out of their neighborhoods.